Simplify to Find Focus

Balancing the freshness of the novice with the wisdom of experience is a balance I always strive for. The old school of learning by copying the masters was used for centuries, and I learned this as well, sketching in museums with the old-world masters. Now we have photoshop, AI and YouTube videos. I call it YouTube University but one must put in the time to really understand technique, theory, method and one’s own inner guide. I do love joyful exploration and happy accidents, but there is no substitute for experience.

The sign of a more mature artist is the ability to edit, to leave things out. As a student, I began drawing precisely, putting in every detail. This is how I honed my visual skills, trained my hand, and put in the hours of practice. I learned shadows, perspective and enhanced every detail. A camera captures a scene differently than the human eye, so it will never appear exactly as you see it in a photo. As I listened to my own voice, I began to edit the scene. What did I want to explore more deeply and what details got left out. I began to simplify the scene in order to bring more focus to the main subject. The end result did not need to look like the photograph. The editing process allowed me to inject my own feelings about the scene, whatever the scene may be, landscape, figure or still-life.

Eventually the realistic scenes were replaced with looser interpretations allowing color to express feelings. Then I let go of the objects and simply concentrated on movement, color, composition and texture. I found my focus. But now I am at another threshold. I want to simplify the abstract, to focus on a narrow range within the painting. I use working in series to explore this process. From the initial painting I will choose an area that I find most interesting, then I paint another piece focusing on that, and then another, and so on. Look at some of the early works of Georgia O’Keeffe or Monet, compared to their later works. The emphasis shifted from representative to depicting the qualities of color and light. They both moved to simplify. I am in the process of this as well.

Where is your creative path taking you?